Two for one

The very first novel we read in English this year was Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. Without giving away too much of the ending for anyone who may read it in the future, an important event at the end happens on a hill. We don't know much about the hill, but it's size might have affected the meaning of the book, as the ending is purposefully a bit unclear, and the distance between two characters at the end might have mattered. However, Morrison chooses not to tell us the size of the hill, and leave it up to us. The first class period after we had been assigned to read the ending, we were discussing how this ambiguity affects the meaning of the novel. Someone raised a hand to ask, "How far was Character A from Character B when that happened?" Mrs. Saxsma responded with, "Seventeen feet." When she was asked how she knew that, she answered, "It's in the teacher's edition of Song of Solomon." It took the class a while to figure out that she was kidding, and the looks on our faces were quite entertaining.


Now we're reading a novel called Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez, in which the narrator returns to a town 27 years after a murder took place to investigate it by talking to the people of the town and gathering evidence. It's very interesting, because the only information we have is very unreliable, as it was only recorded 27 years later. The townspeople could not even agree on whether it was raining or not, so how are they supposed to agree about who is to blame for the death of Santiago Nasar? We were discussing this very point in class a few weeks ago, before break. Mrs. Saxsma asked someone in the class what they had had for breakfast a week ago on a specific day of the week. They couldn't remember. She asked someone else what they had had for dinner on a different specific day. They couldn't remember. She then said, paraphrasedly, "Does anyone remember what the weather was 27 years ago? Well, none of you were born, but still, how could you know?" A kid in the class then proceeded to point out that it was probably "Cold, 'cause there was no global warming."

There you go. Two for one.